InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity Redux: Anhanguera ❯ 428355 ( Chapter 5 )

“Bathhouse ,” Caipora said, dismissing 815435 as he reached for his pants.  The girl gathered up the towels and basin that she’d used to wash him off after her lesson and quietly left the room.  Making a face as he dropped the pants to grab the thick blue terrycloth robe instead and shrugged it on.  Given that he was done for the day, he’d much rather have a bath, and he picked up his clothes and strode out of the training room, veering to the left—toward the stairs.

His room was empty, but his food was arranged on the coffee table, and he tossed his clothing to the side as he sat on the sofa and slowly inspected the meal.  Normally, he wouldn’t eat it unless he saw the slave bring it in.  He’d learned that lesson long ago: not to eat or drink anything if he couldn’t verify that it was all right.

He heard the sound of bare feet, whispering on the floor.  Glancing back over his shoulder, he spotted 428355 as she shuffled toward him, only to stop beside him, chin down, staring at the floor.  He frowned thoughtfully.  “Did you bring this in here?” he asked, nodding at the food.

She shook her head.  “No, master.”

“Did you see who did?”

She shook her head again.  “No, master.”

He sighed.  On the one hand, he was hungry.  On the other?  He made a face.  It was Saturday night, and considering it was Saturday night, then he knew better than to take anything at face value—not when the sounds of the night’s entertainment was already filtering through the opened balcony doors.  It was the same on every one of the islands—at least, the ones where he’d been assigned.  The only one he hadn’t worked on was the Isle of Children, and that was just as well.

Saturday nights, though . . . It was the enforcers’ one night of cutting loose, of allowing the ridged codes to fall away.  Down in the area that was normally used for exercising the slaves, they were gathering, forming their makeshift arena.  Grudges were settled, oftentimes to bloody effect, domination was tested and determined.  Bets were made and lost and won, but by the end of it all, it was normal for the entire thing to degenerate into a perverse kind of orgy—man on man where nothing was ever taboo . . . Caipora rarely attended what they, ‘affectionately’ deemed The Games.  More often than not, The Games came to find him, anyway, though rarely on Saturday nights . . .

“Come,” he said, ordering the girl closer.

She did.

He gestured vaguely at the food arranged before him.  “I want you to taste everything—everything.”

She seemed confused, but she did as she was told, taking tiny, tiny bites of all the offerings.

“Draw a bath,” he told her.  If anyone had tampered with his food, it would take a little bit for it to kick in.  He didn’t think it was poisoned, of course—he’d have just thrown it all out if he suspected that, and he certainly wouldn’t have allowed the slave girl to taste it for him—but, given that he still remembered his initiation a little too well, he wasn’t about to take any chances that someone could have tried to dose him with sleeping powder again . . .

Her tiny footfalls shuffled off toward the bathing area to do as instructed.  Reaching for the bottle of Deadman whiskey—it was still sealed—he yanked it open and drank it straight, ignoring the glass that had been provided.

By the time the girl returned to him, he’d polished off almost the whole bottle, which he really shouldn’t have done, given that it was nearly a hundred-eighty-proof, and given that being drunk here in this place was an entirely stupid thing to do.  She stood by, waiting for him to notice her.

“Are you feeling all right?” he asked, not really as concerned with her overall well-being as he was in making sure that he could eat his food.

“Yes, master,” she replied, her small voice so soft in the quiet despite the underlying revelry drifting through the balcony doors.

Satisfied that she was telling him the truth, he made quick work of wolfing down the food—now, half-cold.  At one time, it used to bother him, sitting there, eating while the slaves hovered nearby.  He didn’t give a second thought now, however.  They were fed well enough, anyway—not the food that he got, certainly, but it was enough to sustain them.  It had become par for course . . .

Standing abruptly, he stalked past her toward the waiting bath. The scent of relaxing herbs and oils drifted to him well before he rounded the room partition.  He hadn’t told her to prepare a soaking bath, but he couldn’t say that he was unhappy about it, either.  Stripping off the robe, he settled into the tub with a sigh.

The girl slipped into the room, started to remove her dress.  He held up a hand to stop her.  “I’m going to soak for a while,” he told her.  “Just take care of the dishes and prepare my bed.”

“Yes, master,” she said, shuffling out of the bathing area.  A minute later, he heard the soft clink of the dishes as she gathered them together.

Slipping down far enough to allow his head to rest on the edge of the tub, he closed his eyes, savored the feeling of the healing herbs and oils as they soaked into his skin.  It was a rare moment for him, allowing himself to cautiously relax.  Maybe it had something to do with the booze; he didn’t know and didn’t care at the moment.

The steam rising off the water created a hazy mist around him: a lazy kind of dim reality where he lingered just outside of the inner sanctum where memories coexisted with a strange sort of detachment, free for him to view at will, even if none of it belonged to him anymore.  That lifetime was so long ago, the echoes of the innocent laughter, the sweetest voices that murmured somewhere in the hidden dark, and if he listened closely, he could hear them—the ones he’d stepped away from.  Had he realized at the time, just what time could do?  Did he understand when he’d left them that it might easily be for the last time . . .?

It was stupid, wasn’t it?  Stupid and maybe a little bit naïve.  He’d honestly thought that nothing could really touch him; that he was above such atrocities; that he would do what he had to do because he had to do it to bring about the greater good: the downfall of an empire, and that none of it could touch him.  He was better than that, wasn’t he?  A lifetime of righteousness that had all fallen by the wayside . . .

His mind flashed back to that fateful day: the one that had changed his path forever.  Whether for good or ill still remained to be determined, and he wondered, didn’t he?  The video that had been dropped off . . . the sense of foreboding that he’d gotten as he’d held it in his hand, as he’d stared at the unassuming white label.  ‘Korin,’ it had said—just that—and somehow, he’d felt compelled to watch it . . . If he hadn’t seen that video—if he hadn’t felt that consuming sense of righteous indignation . . .

“What’s your name?” a soft female voice off camera asked.

The small woman, lost in the copious folds of a thick white robe, shrugged her shoulders, bright coppery hair shining in the harsh, forced light of the small cinderblock room.  Huddling on a cold metal folding chair behind a rickety card table, she gnawed on her already raw bottom lip, her gaze flicking to the camera for only a moment before skittering down and away.  “I’m 359156—but . . . but now, I go by Korin . . .”

“And . . . you were a slave, Korin?”

One jerky nod, her hair falling over her face.  “I . . . Yes,” she whispered.  “Y-Yes . . .”

“You were sold to Cassius Deonopoly, correct?  Owner of the Deonopoly coffee plantation in Venezuela?  And he set you free when he died.”

Another jerky nod.  This time, she didn’t speak.

“He set all of you free, didn’t he?  His household staff.  You were his, uh, his sex slave?”

She winced, but nodded again.  “Y-Yes . . .”

“Can you tell me about the place where you came from?  What they, uh, did . . . to you . . .?”

Korin’s hands were shaking when she reached out, lifted the mug of steaming coffee, cradled it in those hands as though she simply needed something to hold on to.  “I . . . I was bred there,” she replied, her tone indicating that she unsure of exactly what the woman wanted to know.  “We all were . . . Born there in the breeding camp . . . taken and raised on the Isle of Children.  It was strict, but they weren’t . . . weren’t unkind . . . As long as you did as you were told, they didn’t do anything to you . . .”

“When you were a child,” the interviewer reiterated.  “And then?”

Korin sighed.  “When you’re nine, maybe ten, they gather you together.  They inspect everyone—every last part of you—you understand?—and they separate you.  If you’re not so pretty or if you’re male and not very tall, they send you to the Meat House—umm, where they train the regular slaves.  If you’re pretty enough or a promising male, they send you to the Gauntlet—the sex slave training compound.  If you’re exceptionally pretty, though, they send the girls to the Virgin House . . .” She winced.  “I was not pretty enough for that,” she said.  “I . . . I wasn’t valuable enough . . .”

The woman cleared her throat.  “Can you . . .? Would you tell me about your . . . your training . . .?”

Korin flashed the interviewer a nervous, almost frightened, look, but she nodded, drawing a deep breath, her fingertips leeching white as she held on tightly to the mug in her hands.  “When you go there—to the Gauntlet—you’re divided up by size.  I am not so tall, so I . . . I was not as valuable there, either.  For the first two years, you are only to observe training of the older slaves.  You watch so that you will know what is expected of you—what you will learn, too.  Then, you’re not afraid.  You see sex for what it is: an expression of the body.  You also must see to the masters’ needs.  The older slaves are more important—they must focus on their training.  We were made to assist in the cleaning and other household tasks.  If you weren’t fast enough, if you were clumsy, the house slaves would beat you, kick you, spit on you . . . but when you were old enough to be trained, they couldn’t do that anymore—you were of value then . . .”

“And they taught you how to . . . have sex . . .?”

Korin winced.  “Yes . . . sometimes for hours at a time, master after master, but we weren’t to come too much—it was sloppy and selfish, they said.  Only a master or a mistress was allowed that luxury.  If you . . . If you broke this rule, they would put a clip on you, and that hurt, so . . .”

“So, you’d be in pain instead of having an orgasm.”

She nodded . . .

And the video had gone on and on: sickening details of the things these ‘masters’ would do under the guise of training.  The whipping—never hard enough to cause permanent damage, but on youkai or hanyou bodies, it was still brutal enough . . . The punishments for disobeying that ranged from slaps on the face to whippings . . . She alluded to other forms of punishment but had no real knowledge aside from rumors and innuendo—whisper amongst slaves . . . She’d seen male slaves being forced to submit to anal sex with stallions, with bulls . . . They said that it prepared the males since no youkai cock was as large as that . . . It was enough to horrify him—He, who had been raised in such a very different world—a world where things like that simply did not exist, who had only known the discipline of parents who thought that taking away his phone for a week was suitable punishment for talking back . . .

Caipora frowned.  He wasn’t sure if it was worse, these things that Korin had reluctantly detailed in the confines of a safe room, or the things he himself had witnessed and even committed that were far, far worse . . .

He’d started out in the breeding camps—everyone did once they gained the trust of someone in the organization—keeping the women in order, doling out punishment when the need arose.  It wasn’t horrible once he grew accustomed to it—at least, on the slave side of things—and maybe that would have continued to be bearable, too, but . . .

“Come on.  It’s our turn to monitor the birthing house.”

Glancing up from the practice mannequin that he had been pummeling for the last hour, Diego frowned.  “The birthing house?  I thought the older guys did that.”

Offering a nonchalant shrug, understanding that ‘older’ in this instance just referred to those who had been in the organization longer, Franco adjusted the whip on his belt.  “Guess they consider you to be trustworthy enough now,” he said, leading the way as Diego fell in step beside him.  The chameleon-youkai sighed.  “Fuck . . . I hate having to go in there . . .”

“They have attendants to watch over the births,” Diego pointed out as they strode across the compound: the neatly arranged shelters where the breeding women lived.  “We just have to make sure that none of the women try to fight to keep their babies, right?”

Franco grunted.  “It’s a little more involved than that,” he muttered.  “Well, you’ll see . . .”

The stench of the birthing house hit him well before they drew near the doors.  As if every foul, malignant thing lived in there, it took everything within him to force himself to approach it.  Franco didn’t seem to notice Diego’s very real reluctance, and he reached for the door handle and yanked it open.

The God-awful reek that hit him was dark and fierce, very nearly bringing him to his knees as he furiously told himself not to vomit.  The stink of blood and darker things was oppressive.  The place wasn’t anything more than an open room with low metal fencing that divided the place into human stalls that likely contained ofuda that was closer to a barn than a sanitary place to give birth.  Blood and other body fluids soaked the sand covered the floors, the sounds of groaning, of moaning, of sobbing filled the air.

Only four of the twenty beds were occupied.  Franco muttered something under his breath about it being a slow day as they stopped and stepped onto a raised platform in the center of the building under a garish and harsh overhead lamp.

The woman in the closest bed was deep into delivery, clamped to a steel table as she bore down hard.  With one last push, the baby slid free.  From his vantage point, he couldn’t see what it was, and it didn’t really matter.  The woman shrieked when the attendant handed the newborn off to another one, only to turn back, to jam her hand up inside her, wrenching the placenta free.

The attendant spent more time, checking the placenta than he did, making sure that the woman who had just given birth was all right.  Satisfied that the placenta was intact, he gestured off to the side, at the darkened corner that Diego hadn’t yet noticed.  A buzz and a scrape, and he blinked, watched as a male slave was dragged forward.  Tall, broad, he could have easily fought back against the handler who dragged him forward by a chain, looped through the collar around his throat.  It didn’t even seem to occur to him, though, as he was shoved into the pen with the woman who had just given birth.

Diego watched in horrified silence as the slave was secured to the steel table.  He didn’t need any instruction, either.  Climbing up onto the steel gurney, he mounted the woman who had just given birth, rutted away on her as she sobbed . . .

“They don’t waste time around here,” Franco muttered.  “As long as the placenta is all out . . . Well, that’s how they make their money . . .”

“Enforcer!”

Diego stepped forward as the attendant with the baby hurried toward him.  “What?”

The attendant shoved the baby into his arms, a disgusted expression contorting his features.  “It’s no good,” he said, turning on his heel, heading for the next stall—the next woman in labor.

Frown deepening as he glanced down at the squirming and writhing baby in his arms, Diego looked away a moment later, stomach twisting in a contorted sort of revulsion.  The baby—a boy—looked completely fine until he turned his head.  The whole side of his tiny face seemed to be caved in, contorted—missing.  A birth defect?  Likely from the overbreeding that the women were forced to endure . . .

The woman who had just given birth had somehow managed to yank one hand free, and she was screaming, raking at the slave who was still on top of her, still humping away.  Franco started past him, and Diego caught his arm.  “What am I supposed to do with this?” he growled, gesturing with the infant still in his arms.

“Kill it,” Franco said as he strode away.

It took a minute for Franco’s words to sink in.  It took another minute for his own brain to really grasp what was said.  ‘K . . . Kill . . . it . . .?  Him . . .?’

It occurred to him that the child wouldn’t have a chance, but that thought did little to alleviate the absolute disgust of what he was being forced to do.  Even if he tried to get out of it, someone else—Franco probably—would just step in and do it, and if he refused to do a job they asked of him . . .

The woman’s shrieks thumped through his head.  “Give me my baby!  Give me back my baby!”

As if in answer to his mother’s cries, the infant whined, body stiffening as he tried to roll toward her.  As long as the child lived, that woman would fight.  It was instinct, he supposed, and, in this place where instinct seemed to override reason, it made sense, even if the idea of doing it rose against everything he’d ever believed . . . Tightening his grip on the slippery infant, Diego gritted his teeth, understanding on some level that he had no choice—hating himself at the same time for it, too . . . Adjusting the squirming baby in one arm, he grasped the infant’s head and twisted hard.

The baby went limp almost instantly.  The mother seemed to realized a second later, too, and her shrieks increased as she swung wildly while Franco tried to catch her arm, to subdue her without injuring her.

As Diego stared at the dead infant in his hands.

“Would you like for me to wash you now, master?”

Snapping out of his reverie, unsurprised at the ragged quality of his breathing, Caipora sat up, shot the girl a quick look.  “No, I . . . I’ll wash myself,” he replied.

His answer seemed to distress her as she wrung her hands over and over in the folds of the slip she wore.  She obviously thought that she’d done something to displease him, and the anxiety that sparked in her youki was instant and intense.

He sighed, wondering vaguely why he noticed—why it bothered him.  “Tell me, have you always been a slave?” he asked her, more to make conversation, to get her to stop mauling her slip than out of any real interest.

She blinked, her body going stock-still for a moment.  “Yes,” she said.  “I mean, I think so . . .”

“So, you were raised on the Isle of Children,” he mused.  “I see.”  Glancing at her, he frowned when he noticed the harsh red mark on her cheek.  “You didn’t have that before,” he said, gesturing at her face.  “What happened?”

She didn’t look like she wanted to tell him.  She seemed as though she were trying to decide how much trouble she’d be in if she refused.  In the end, though, she must have realized that she simply could not say that to a master, and she winced.  “The ones in the kitchen said I was underfoot,” she whispered.  “They shoved me out of the way, and I slipped and hit my head against the doorway.”

He nodded slowly.  The other slaves weren’t necessarily kind to the virgins.  Most of them harbored some degree of ill will, if not outright hatred, for them.  Given that they were treated a bare step above the way the domestics were, it wasn’t surprising, especially when they virgin in question was just a little girl.  It happened often enough that it bordered on normal, even if he wasn’t very pleased by it.  There also wasn’t much he could do about it, not without inadvertently singling her out, making her more of a target than she already was.

“Come here.  Let me see that—make sure there’s no permanent damage.”

She did as she was told, kneeling down in the edge of the bathtub while he sat up a little more, turned toward her, fingers gentle as he held her chin to inspect the damage.  It wasn’t more than trace bruising, and it didn’t clip her eye.  Satisfied that she’d live, he let go of her and slowly shook his head.  “Be more careful next time,” he warned her.

She nodded quickly.  “I will, master.”

“So, you have no idea where you’re from,” he mused.  It was more of a statement than a question.  He shrugged.  “Well, you weren’t born in the breeding camps; that much I know.”

She slowly lifted her chin, her eyes awash with her questions.  For a moment, she looked like she wanted to speak, but she thought better of it, her expression registering a certain resignation.

“You can ask,” he said, a little curious to hear what she was thinking.

She transferred her weight from one foot to the other in an anxious little dance.  “How . . .? How would you know that I wasn’t born here?”

“You can tell by looking at you,” he replied.  “You look nothing at all like the breeding stock, and I’ve never seen a thunder-youkai amongst them, either.”

She considered that for a long minute.  Even as she stood, chin down as she stared at her hands, he could tell that she was processing that, though what conclusion she ultimately drew was anyone’s guess.

He sighed again.  “428355 . . . That’s too long.  I’ll call you Five, all right?  But you have to answer me when I do.”

“Five,” she repeated thoughtfully.  “Because it’s my last number, master?”

He grunted.  “Yes.  It’s easier than remembering the whole string of them, and since you’re assigned to me, I shouldn’t have to be bothered in remembering the whole damn thing.”

She nodded, seeming almost . . . happy . . .? He didn’t dwell upon that, though, as he sank back down in the water once more, in no hurry at all to get out of the bath.  She hopped up, set herself about readying his toothbrush, his shaving items.

He watched her with a frown.  In the morning, he was leaving with the old bastard for the annual overmaster meeting at Anhanguera’s private island.  Because of that, Five was going to be under the charge of the kitchen staff, even though she would still return here to sleep at night, and he made a face.  “Try not to draw their attention, especially for the next couple days.  You’re going to be under the kitchen staff’s supervision.  Make sure you’re still in one piece when I get back.  Understand?”

She nodded again.  He could tell from the expression on her face that she was curious to know where he was going.  Too bad he didn’t even want to think about it, let alone to discuss it with a little slave girl.